If you like long, wide beaches ringed by a verdent green jungle vibe, then you’ll like Santa Teresa. It’s a small town (its one paved road is less than three years old) on the edge of a peninsula jutting out from the center of Costa Rica. It’s primarily a mellow backpacker and surf town. There’s just a few shops and restaurants, none of which are actually on the beach. They are all along the main road.
There were a lot of young Scandinavians in town. I hadn’t seen that in Tamarindo or La Fortuna. I really couldn’t figure out why until I talked to a Norwegian girl near the end of my stay. She said a lot of Scandinavians go to Thailand for a vacation during the winter. But that’s been difficult now with covid. And then a large Swedish travel company coordinated some kind of a deal with a local surf camp that created good deals to come to Santa Teresa for a lot of the hostels and hotels in town.
The best part about surfing here is the beach break goes on forever. Even with a few hundred people in the water it never feels crowded. You can always move somewhere away from other surfers. The challenge is that you may not be at the best break if you’re away from others, but at my level, that really doesn’t matter much.
I was able to surf a handful of days here. I found the waves challenging. They were soft on the backside and then had a steep drop if you didn’t catch it right. So I was either missing the waves from behind, or going over the falls if I was too far in front. I had some great conversations with other surfers in the water from Switzerland, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Massachusetts and Minnesota. They were all better than me, but were still at that kind of early intermediate level. And they mostly had the same challenges with the waves. The local Costa Ricans and the visiting, more advanced, surfers on the shorter boards were having a blast though. They timed it right and had some really nice long rights and, sometimes, lefts. There were also a lot of beginners in the white water practicing their pop ups.
A bigger swell came in for two days I was here and I didn’t go out then. The outside sets were over 6 feet, which wasn’t that bad. I couldn’t catch those, but could avoid them. However the inside smaller sets that I could catch were breaking right on the shore. It definately wasn’t as crowded out those two days 🙂
The final day I was there, the swell went down a bit, so I went out. It was unexpectedly crowded. Bobbing heads in the water as far as the eye could see. I picked a spot that was less crowded. The waves were still big, however many were on the edge of being catchable. But there were people all around me. Everyone seemed nice, but they were all locals. I was the only one on a longboard, there was no real line up since it was a wide beach break, and I just always seemed to either be in their way or was accidently blocked by them as I tried to move into a wave. It was the perfect day for advanced and intermediate surfers. They were all catching amazing rides on their shorter boards. But with the people all around me and the size of the waves, it just got too hard, so I went in early. And there were no beginners anywhere in sight 🙂
My biggest problem in Santa Teresa was that it had the double whammy of poor internet and really bad mobile phone service. The main Costa Rica service I was using didn’t work and the second local SIM card I bought barely worked. So I couldn’t even use my phone as a hotspot. Also, Costa Rica is a lot more expensive than any country I’ve been to in Latin America so far. Overall, I really liked the place. I just need to get better at this sport before I’d come back.
I had an Airbnb apartment which was actually part of a hotel. They had apartments on one side and some dorm rooms on the other. So it had something of a hostel feel, with a shared kitchen and refrigerator outside for those in the dorms. It was nice, but a bit noisy.
